Table Of ContentTHE PAGEANT OF EMPIRE: PAUL SCOTT'S
THE RAJ QUARTET
THE PAGEANT OF EMPIRE: PAUL SCOTT'S THE RAJ QUARTET
AND RELATED VERSIONS OF IMPERIALISM IN THE
ANGLO-INDIAN NOVEL
by
ARUNA SRIVASTAVA, B.A., M.A.
A Thesis
Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
McMaster University
November, 1988
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ( 1988) McMASTER UNIVERSITY
(English) Hamilton, Ontario
TITLE: The Pageant of Empire: Paul Scott's The .Haj (Juartet and
Related Versions of Imperialism in the Anglo-Indian Novel
AUTHOR: Aruna Srivastava, B.A. (University of Waterloo)
M.A. (McMaster University)
SUPERVISOR: Dr. Maqbool Aziz
NUMBER OF PAGES: vii, 357
ii
To my parents. .
Gladys and lCD. Srivastava
Abstract
Although Paul Scott is a successor to other Anglo-Indian
novelists, his literary reputation is unjustly -overshadowed,
particularly by E.M. Forster's. Scott's epic novel, T!?e Raj Ouarte~ and
its sequel, Staying 0!7, provide a pointed indictment of the human
costs of British imperialism from a British point-of-view, both
employing and undermining the standard themes and conventions of
the Anglo-Indian novel. A complex and repeated series of images and
symbols diagnoses the pathological state of the Raj at its moment of
collapse. Scott's Anglo-India is trapped In a mythical Edwardian era
of imperial certainty, rather than in the contemporary political
reality of Indians· insistence on their right to self-rule.
The current weakness of the Raj is that it is riven from within;
the novel explores such issues as race and class, and points to the
conflicts between, and paradoxes of, liberal and conservative
imperial policies and ideologies. The Anglo-Indians· circumscribed
sense of place, their attitudes to language, and their limited view of
history expose the ultimate destructiveness of imperialism for those
subjected to it.
Scott's achievement notwithstanding, the uncritical and
apolit1cal academ1c study of h1s novels and other novels about lnd1a
overshadows the 11terary achievements of Indian, Pakistani and
Bangladeshi writers writing in English, permits continued ignorance
iv
and devaluing of the vast diversity of literatures in Indian languages,
and continues to perpetuate the damagingly false images and
attitudes about India which sustained the imperial venture in the
first place.
v
Acknowledgements
1 am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council for the funding which allowed me to complete this
dissertation on schedule. My committee members, James Dale and
John Ferns, offered valuable suggestions, and exhibited much grace
under pressure.
My Intellectual and personal debt to two people Is enormous. A
man w\th an astounding depth and breadth of knowledge, my
supervisor Maqbool Aziz taught me how to think critically, while
encouraging me to think for myself and to view lfterature and my
chosen academic profession In substantially different, and more
rewarding, ways than before. Linda Hutcheon has provided me with
unfall ing personal and academic encouragement when I most needed
It, and is an intellectual mentor of the highest rank. To her, I
dedicate Chapter 6, "The Presence of the Past."
This thesis was largely written elsewhere; to the ambience of
Coldstream, Grace Street, Westminster Avenue, and Staulo Cresecent
I give grateful acknowledgement. For their unflagging support during
my period of dissertation dementia, I am indebted to many friends
who shared their homes, their Ideas, and their shoulders: Ibrahim
Attieh, Pat Cogswell, Donald Goellnicht, Kathleen Hall, AI I son Lee,
Mary O'Connor, Susan Schenk, Diana Swart, and Prisct\la Walton.
I have dedicated this work to my parents, to whom I would like
to take the opportunity to express--as I haven't often enough--my
deepest gratitude and love. Their connection with this study is
Intimate. To my mother, especially, my heartfelt appreciation for an
eagle proofreading eye.
I am particularly grateful to Heather Jones for her continued
support and for running Interference for me, and to Ani Ia Srivastava
for eleventh-hour assistance. I reserve a special mention also for my
husband Gregg Farrar, a walking thesaurus many a Sunday morning,
and one of my firmest believers. Finally, for waiting, I thank David
Winkle, who was unrivalled In his ability to remind and assure me
wlth consistent good humour that there Is lffe beyond the
dissertation and, Indeed, beyond academia. 1 survived on that sense of
pro port I on.
vi
Table of Contents
Prologue: Imperialism and Its Discontents ............................................. I
The Backdrop
1 Imperial Certainty in Anglo-India .................................................. 23
2 Setting the Stage: Paul Scott's Predecessors ............................... )4
The Main Scene: Paul Scott
3 Imperial Uncertainty: Scott's Anglo-India .................................. 114
4 I mages of Anglo-India .......................................................................... 161
5 An Imagined Community: Landscape and Language
in Anglo-India ......................................................................................... 205
6 The Presence of the Past.. ................................................................... 244
7 Clearing the Stage: Staying On. ..................................................... 282
Epilogue: Postcolonial Accusations ............................................................. 297
Appendix A: Names and Dates in The .Raj (Juarte/.. ........................ 311
Appendix B: Versions of Imperial History: "Divide and Rule"
and Indian Nationalism ........................................................ 329
Works Cited or Consulted ................................................................................ 344
vii
Prologue: Impertausm and Its Discontents
Colonies oo not cease to be colonies because they are inoopendent. --Benjamin Disraeli
A literary study should not ignore larger political and cultural
contexts. As a study of novels formed and informed by their imperial
context, this work is thus inevitably concerned with imperial ism.
More precisely, it is about versions and stages of British imperialism:
a number of imperial isms, seen at different historical moments; seen
from below, from the perspective of the imperialized; from above,
from that of the imperialist; seen retrospectively by a writer
diagnosing and documenting the disintegration of a particular empire
and imperial idea, a writer who, in turn, is seen retrospectively by a
reader and critic who will place him in an imperial literary tradition.
Many treatlses on and definitions of imperialism do not
consider its larger context in history and culture. Few studies,
therefore, theorize about the mutual implications of culture and
imperialism, most likely because the pejorative connotations of the
word "imperialism" seem to be at odds with more neutral concepts of
"culture." The ideas of dominance, force and coercion, of power
associated with "imperialism," in our present historical era do not
allow us to perceive it without emotion, because we are committed,
ideologically if not in practice, to an egalitarian or democratic ethos.
According to Edward Said, the resulting black-and-white view of
imperial history encourages a "polltics of blame" ("Intellectual" 45)
which ignores the historical and cultural complexities of different
imperialisms. Said thus urges intellectuals to analyze the cultural
productivity of, as well as the damage caused by imperialism to the
societies of the imperialists and those imperialized.
I have twice used the word "imperialized," the rhetorical effect
of which is to point to the difficulties of defining the term
imperialism, and distinguishing it from the often synonymous
colonialism. To a certain extent, I use the terms conventionally:
imperialism is the theory or idea, colonialism the practice. In fact,
as a term, the word colonialism predates imperialism, the latter
being a late nineteenth-century neologism coined to explain and
discuss the phenomenon of rapid national expansion. According to
Eric Hobsbawm, "emperors and empires were old, but imperialism was
quite new .... it was a novel term devised to describe a novel
phenomenon" (60).
As practice, colonialism is simply imperialism felt, is
"imperialism seen from below" (Thornton, Doctrines 6). Further, we
can see why colonialism has always carried a more pejorative
sense than imperialism As Thornton puts it, nobody admits to being
a "colonialist," whereas in the past many have proudly adopted the
title of "imperialist" (Doctrines 8). When it first gained currency,
then, imperialism was associated with "trusteeship and the
governing of colonies for humane purposes" (de Schweinitz 16),
slowly acquiring its negative connotations as economic theories of
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